Starfish simplifies antipiracy protection with transport stream watermark insertion

Starfish Technologies, a pioneer in transport streaming processing, has added to its market leading family of products for broadcasters and streamers. The new addition inserts watermark sequences directly into encoded media streams and will be launched at NAB 2022 (24 – 27 April, Las Vegas Convention Center, booth N2031).

There is frequently a requirement to protect content when distributing valuable media over streaming feeds. The TS Watermark Inserter is a completely self-contained application that runs on COTS hardware. The device accepts an incoming transport stream or streams (SPTS or MPTS), decodes it, adds the watermark overlay then re-encodes to the same format and bit rate.

The watermark sequence is stored within the application and can be readily updated by the user. “This is one of those requirements that many organisations have for broadcast, IPTV and OTT,” said Peter Blatchford, CEO of Starfish. “You need to add anti-piracy protection but do not want to add a complex multi vendors solution. This is an integrated software application that does the job, seamlessly and cost-effectively.”

TS Watermark Inserter, part of the extended range of transport stream processing technology from Starfish, runs on an enterprise grade server and multiple channels, each inserting unique watermarks, can run on a single server. “We have been continuing to work closely with our users over the past couple of years to develop and enhance our product range in line with their transport stream requirements”, Blatchford added. “We very much look forward to the opportunity of meeting again face-to-face at NAB 2022”.